Abstract

Michael Polanyi was in a complicated relationship with enlightenment. On the one hand, he criticised the seventeenth to nineteenth century Enlightenment for bringing forward a sceptical and disenchanted world that is vulnerable to moral decay. On the other hand, he was heralding a new enlightenment that would rejuvenate moral life in Western civilization. This chapter discusses whether there was an inconsistency between Polanyi’s explanation of why the Enlightenment had failed and his explanation of why a new enlightenment would prevail. First, it portrays the development of the Polanyian critique of the Enlightenment from his early works until his later years. Then, it shows the evolution of Polanyi’s novel „post-critical” enlightenment and continues by commenting on whether views about science, people and the public understanding of science were similar in cases of these two enlightenments. The chapter concludes with an inquiry into whether Polanyi’s criticism of the age of reason and his efforts to foster a „post-critical” age of reason were compatible with each other.